Monk At 100

Monk's ordained title sums him up well – his mystique, influence and leadership, the innovator of a new, hip approach to jazz called “bebop,” the educator and preacher of this new jazz gospel, and not in some classroom, but at his house and at the club, after hours, teaching young, hungry musicians, many of whom would go on to become jazz “greats” in their own right, like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins... the list goes on and on. Bebop started as art music, the "underground" of jazz to the mainstream swing music, which dominated the 1930s. But bebop would supplant swing, becoming the new vernacular of jazz, and influencing most American music that followed, as this modern jazz language continues to inform funk, R&B, rock, and is heavily sampled in hip hop and beat music to this day.

“Monk became a template for something beyond Monk, a model for making art that matters… Monk’s music remains open and fresh, radical and relevant, continually lending itself to reinvention. Monk made music that invites you in, and then teases you with its mystery… tunes that are instantly sing-able — children ‘get’ Monk — yet operate as the purest distillations of mood and emotion: the joy, the bounce, the freedom, the struggle and pain.” (Journalist Richard Scheinin) “But there was so much more to digest than just his music. What also grabbed my attention were his style and his aesthetic — his beard and his goatee and his album covers. There was his whole persona — how he danced at the piano, how he lay his hands on the keys and attacked a note.” (Pianist Jason Moran)

Speaking of Underground, Thelonious Monk consistently put out some of the most provocative album artwork in jazz, with no better example than Underground, depicting Monk as a French Resistance soldier in World War II. "It may be hard to believe now, but when this album was originally released in 1968, a lot of people, including the people at Columbia Records, seemed more interested in the photograph on the cover than the music in the grooves. To be sure, the cover of Underground - which won a GRAMMY as the year's best - is striking and very clever, an elaborate visual pun on the notion of Thelonious Monk as a soldier in the ‘underground’ of jazz. But the attention focused on it helped obscure the fact that Underground would have been the most noteworthy albums of Monk's career even if it had come in a plain brown wrapper" (Writer/critic Peter Keepnews).

Although Underground is remembered for its provocative album artwork, it quietly marked the final Monk album with saxophonist and longtime collaborator Charlie Rouse. Over a 10-year period, Rouse recorded and toured with Monk, a time he recalled as "...the best years of my musical career. I imagine every musician that worked with Thelonious felt that way, because he brought things out of you that couldn't be brought out. He was... the musician's musician." SFJAZZ has a long history celebrating Thelonious Monk, and it started with a 1988 tribute concert to Monk in the San Francisco Jazz Festival (then called "Jazz In The City") featuring Charlie Rouse, which was recorded and would later be released as 'Epistrophy' on Orrin Keepnews’ Landmark record label. Sadly, it would mark Rouse’s final recording. The sax legend passed away later that year.

The SFJAZZ Collective reimagined the music of Thelonious Monk in 2007, and toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. An all-star ensemble comprising of eight of the finest performer/composers in jazz, the SFJAZZ Collective’s mission each year is to perform fresh arrangements of works by a modern master and newly commissioned pieces by each Collective member. Through this pioneering approach, simultaneously honoring music’s greatest figures while championing jazz’s up-to-the-minute directions, the Collective embodies SFJAZZ’s commitment to jazz as a living, ever-relevant art form. The 2007 lineup featured vibraphone legend and Bay Area resident Bobby Hutcherson, Berkeley-born saxophonist Joshua Redman, trumpeter Dave Douglas, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, trombonist André Hayward, pianist Renee Rosnes, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Eric Harland.

"It’s a cliché of modernism that one generation’s avant-garde assimilates into the next generation’s mainstream. But seven decades after Thelonious Monk helped lay the foundation for modern jazz, he retains the power to rearrange our ears, to recalibrate our notions of what sounds correct and consonant" (Andrew Gilbert, The Mercury News). 100 years after his birth, Monk continues to be discovered and assimilated into mainstream culture. He's the second most-recorded composer in jazz (behind Duke Ellington) and many of his tunes are now popular "standards" in the Great American Songbook. October 10 is Monk's 100th birthday, and SFJAZZ will be celebrating that week with a series of Monk-inspired projects: Danilo Pérez's "PanaMonk," Jason Moran's multi-media "In My Mind," and John Beasley's Monk'estra Big Band. In addition, NEA Jazz Master and Monk disciple Randy Weston will perform and give a talk at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (presented by SFJAZZ) on October 18. The current SFJAZZ Collective also revisits Monk's music in its SFJAZZ residency on October 28 – that day's matinee performance will be live streamed via SFJAZZ's YouTube channel. Whether or not you're able to join in on the festivities at the SFJAZZ Center or beyond, take some quality time on 10/10 to hip yourself to Monk's music and story, one of the all time greats of American music.